A/N: This is for SergioCushion, just because.
Summary: Emily and Charlotte go through milestones together. With the house to themselves, mother/daughter bonding ensues.
Age Guide: Hotch: 57; Emily: 52; Sean: 42; Jack: 17; Henry: 14; Charlotte: 12; Ryan & Ben: 10
July 2023
The trip had been planned over a month ago. At the news that Hotch and Sean would be taking the four boys and the dog camping ("real camping, without phones" as Sean had put it), Emily had been delighted. She'd spent the intervening weeks giddily thinking up ways she and Charlotte could spend the week together. Shopping, haircuts, movies, junk food, visiting with Garcia—she figured she had plenty to go on.
However, by the time she got six kisses on the cheek and waved goodbye to the truckload of men and boys crammed in with an ecstatic golden retriever, Emily was worried that her and Charlotte's week wasn't going to be all she'd hoped for. Charlotte didn't even come out of her room to say goodbye to her dad or brothers; she had been complaining about not feeling well for the past couple of days.
To top it off, Emily and Hotch had discussed the possibility that Emily was in menopause just the night before, and she hadn't been able to get the thought out of her head ever since. She hadn't seen her formerly regular period in a few months now and wasn't pregnant, so she knew Hotch was only trying to be helpful when he tried to point out the source of her irritability, mild depression and hot flashes—it was obvious enough that he shouldn't have had to feel afraid to suggest it. But instead of agreeing outwardly with Hotch, she'd cracked not so happily that a menopausal woman's ability to perform oral sex disappeared right along with her period. He'd countered very lightheartedly that his own ability to perform oral sex had survived his vasectomy years ago and that she should 'suck it up.' He was lucky that his remark only earned him a light smack on the shoulder.
Emily was sure that her snippiness with Hotch—and the entire family, really—made this camping trip quite the getaway. Maybe that had been why Hotch had been so thrilled about it in the first place. Maybe Charlotte had also been concocting a way out of spending the week with her mom, too. Am I really that bad? Emily wondered.
She sighed anxiously and made her way up the stairs in their quiet home. "Charlotte?" she said, knocking softly on her daughter's door.
"What?" Charlotte asked flatly.
Emily nudged open the door and poked her head in, smiling. Her smile faded somewhat when she saw Charlotte lying in the fetal position under her blankets. "Hey, sweetie. You didn't wanna come say goodbye to everyone?"
"I don't feel good. Dad came up to say bye anyway, so it's not a big deal."
"Does your stomach hurt again?"
Charlotte nodded.
Wondering why Charlotte wanted to be under the covers in the middle of a July day, Emily let herself into the room the rest of the way and took a seat at the edge of Charlotte's bed. She brushed the light hair from her forehead and laid the back of her hand against her skin. "You don't feel warm…I don't think you have a fever. Is it really too cold in here? Want me to turn down the air conditioning?"
"I don't care."
"Honey, come on," Emily mumbled, brushing Charlotte's hair back into place. "We have the whole week together. Please don't shut me out so quickly. Don't you want to…go to the mall? Come downstairs and watch a movie? Go for a walk? Anything?"
Charlotte shook her head.
"Are you mad at me? Did I do something?"
Charlotte raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "Seriously, Mom? You know Uncle Sean nicknamed the camping trip 'Let's Get the Men Away from Menopause,' right?"
"He what?" Emily asked, her lips parted in incredulity.
Charlotte shrugged and rolled onto her back. "When he came over for dinner last week and apologized for being late, you cried."
"I did not cry," Emily insisted, but she remembered the scene vividly. Uncontrollable tears.
"Yeah, you did. Everyone saw it, Mom."
"It was allergies, sweetie." Emily pursed her lips and squeezed Charlotte's shoulder. "I'm gonna go out back and lay in the sun for a while. Do you need anything?"
"Tylenol or something?" Charlotte requested.
"Do you have a headache?"
Charlotte shook her head. "No, for my stomach. It's killing me."
Emily's eyes widened. "Oh, that kind of stomachache. Honey, those might be…those might be cramps."
"What do you mean?"
"Menstrual cramps. You might be starting your period soon." Emily knew she had no legitimate reason to be jealous of Charlotte for heading into her childbearing years while she herself was on the way out. Emily had already had children and hadn't planned on having more, so she had no need to be fertile anymore. Despite her sound reasoning, she still pined for her own waning sense of womanhood.
"My period?" Charlotte asked, the shaking in her voice alerting Emily to the fact that she was now terrified.
"Charlotte, it's nothing to be afraid of. You and I talked about it and you had sex ed at school…you know why women have periods."
"It's fine when it's on a video," Charlotte retorted. "I don't want it to happen to me."
Emily's lips drooped in anguish and her brow furrowed. "It means your body's working, honey. It means that somewhere down the road, when you're ready, you can have babies—"
"Do we have any Tylenol?" Charlotte interjected.
Emily considered trying to keep the conversation going, but she knew there would be no getting over Charlotte's moodiness right now, if she were indeed somewhere near her first period. "Sure, I'll get you some. Maybe you should put that phone away and try and take a nap. And come to think of it, I need to go to the store. I'll let you sleep."
"My phone?" Charlotte asked innocently.
Emily reached her hand underneath Charlotte's pillow and pulled out a cell phone, wiggling it smugly in front of Charlotte's face. She set the phone down on Charlotte's nightstand and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. "Turn the phone off for a while and get some real rest, okay?"
Charlotte rolled her eyes at the affection, thanking Emily grudgingly when she brought back some pills and water.
As if on cue, Emily's mother called her while she was at the drugstore down the street stocking up on a variety of feminine hygiene products for Charlotte to choose from. "Hi, Mom."
"You sound stressed."
Emily laughed and tossed another box into the miniature shopping cart. "I think Charlotte's about to start her period. She's normally so eager to spend time with the family, you know her. But she hasn't been feeling well and she's been lying in bed all day with cramps. And she's got the pubescent teenage girl thing down pat already. Moody as hell."
"Like you?" Elizabeth quipped.
"Yeah, apparently my menopause is the running joke in the family. Please don't tell me you knew the nickname Sean gave the camping trip."
"What, dear?" Elizabeth sounded genuinely confused.
"Never mind. Anyway, why'd you call? Is everything okay?"
"Oh, everything's fine. Just calling to say hello and see how things are," Elizabeth said.
"Well, that's how things are," Emily said darkly. "I've got a cart full of pads and tampons. I'm going to see if there are any teenage boys working the counter. I feel like embarrassing someone."
"Oh, dear…"
"Any tips?" Emily asked on her stroll to the front of the store. She passed some candy bars and grabbed an assortment. "Things I should say to her, things I shouldn't say to her?"
"Well, if you've raised her to be anything like you, there's probably not anything she'll want to hear from you. You started yours on a plane ride to the Ukraine. You were…not happy."
"Because I was on a plane. Charlotte's in the comfort of her own home, and the only other person in the house is her mom. And yes, I may be a tad scary right now, but at least her dad and all her brothers are gone. She's got it pretty good as far as far as first periods go."
"Well, just…don't use the words 'calm down,' and let me know if you need anything. I need to get to sleep or I'll never wake up in the morning. Fiji says hello," Elizabeth said teasingly. "Oh, and so does your father."
As an unfortunate pimply teenage boy rang up Emily's purchases, blushing a bit, Emily's phone beeped in her ear. She looked at the screen. "That's Charlotte calling me, so I have to let you go anyway. Tell Dad I said hi, okay?"
"I will."
"Mom," Charlotte said in a panicky whine the second Emily took the call.
"I'm here, what is it?" Emily asked, now in a panic herself. That word in that tone of voice never failed to strike fear in her.
Charlotte sniffed. "I think it started."
"Oh, oh, okay, okay…I'll, uhh…" Emily saw that the cashier was waiting for her to pay. "I'll be home in three minutes, okay, sweetie? I'm just leaving the drugstore."
"Okay, but make it two minutes, please."
—
"I already found a pad in your bathroom," Charlotte mumbled when Emily found her sitting uncomfortably on the couch with red eyes soon after.
Emily put down the plastic bags full of supplies and sat down next to Charlotte, who looked mortified. "How is it? Pretty light?"
"Yeah, but that doesn't make it any less…gross."
Emily smiled with gentleness and wrapped an arm around Charlotte's back, pulling her into a loose hug. "Just because your brothers say it's gross doesn't mean it's gross. And I know the idea of…bleeding…from there…might seem that way, but trust me when I say there will come a point when you'll get used to it. You'll usually roll your eyes when it comes around right when you're about to go on vacation, or on a date or something, but you'll get used to it, and it's healthy, okay?"
Charlotte nodded halfheartedly against Emily's shoulder and leaned further into her, having no idea how much that made her mom's day.
"I know this sounds incredibly corny, but you are becoming a woman. I'm actually a little jealous, to be truthful."
"Jealous?" Charlotte asked, peeking up.
"Well…I know it's funny to joke about my menopause—it is funny, even to me, at the right moments—but it's usually pretty sad for me. It's not just about having a period. It's…hard to explain. But you're entering adulthood and I'm moving into senior citizenship. Even though my first period was traumatizing, I still think I might trade it for—"
"Ooh, tell me about your first one," Charlotte said eagerly, sitting up straight.
Emily always took any chance she could get to bond with Charlotte. The times when Charlotte preferred her mom over her dad for a good talk were few and far between. Thus, Charlotte's request sent Emily's heart aflutter. "Really?"
Charlotte nodded quickly and grinned, even. "Yeah. How old were you? Where were you when it happened?"
Emily looked into the back of her own head for the answer. "Uhh, let's see…it was the spring before I turned thirteen, I think…so about twelve and a half? So right around your age. I was on a ten-hour plane ride to the Ukraine with my parents."
"Oh my God, you were on a plane?"
Emily reveled in Charlotte's engrossment. "Yup," she said with a slanted mouth. "Not fun. I got back from the bathroom and didn't want to tell a soul, but I needed something, so I told my mom, and she didn't have anything on her. So then she started asking all these strangers nearby if they had any pads or tampons because her daughter had just started her period."
Charlotte's mouth fell open. "Are you joking?"
Emily shook her head. "Nope…"
"Grandma was mean, geez!"
Emily laughed. "She wasn't trying to be mean. She just…doesn't always think about how other people would feel about what she said. You know Grandma, if it's on her mind, she says it. No filter sometimes."
"Kinda like Jack?"
"Yeah, kinda like Jack."
"Other than Grandma embarrassing you, how was it?"
Emily shrugged. "Kind of uncomfortable. My mom had some painkillers for the cramps but I really just wanted to be curled up in bed."
"So I'm not crazy?" Charlotte asked.
Emily wrapped her other arm around Charlotte as well and pulled her in tight. "You aren't crazy at all. Everything you're going through is perfectly normal. But that doesn't mean I want you to look up the answers to all your questions online. I'd rather you ask me. I know it can be pretty hard to get me alone, but we have this whole week without your dad or your brothers around, so I'm all yours. Any questions?"
"Hmm…is it weird that I kind of want a candy bar right now?"
Emily almost giggled. "Not weird at all. I was hoping I wouldn't have to train you into that." Emily fished through the bags until she found her impulse purchases. She offered them to Charlotte, who looked stunned at what else she saw in the bags. "What's wrong?" Emily asked.
"The…tampons. I know I've seen yours lying around before but…I don't even want to think about putting one of those in," Charlotte said, cringing.
"Those can definitely wait. I know that sounds scary."
Charlotte shook her head. "No, not really. Just…weird. I'm not scared."
"No?" Emily said.
"Not really. Not anymore."
—
"I thought this was 'real camping, without phones,'" Emily said in a mockingly gruff voice when Hotch called her that night.
"Very funny. I had to pry the boys' phones from their hands. They weren't even supposed to bring them. I just wanted to call and check in on you two and then mine's getting put away."
"In your pocket, on vibrate, in case of an emergency, right?" Emily teased.
"Are you going to stop picking on me so I can tell you I love you?"
Emily could hear Sean and the boys chatting and Mitch barking, probably at the crackling campfire or at one of the boys teasing him with food. Her heart warmed at all of this as well as at what Hotch had said. "Sorry. Go ahead." She made her way through the house, shutting off lights.
"No, I already said it," Hotch said with a chuckle. "That's all you're getting."
"Fair enough. I love you, too."
"Is Charlie still awake?" Hotch asked.
"No, she's dead to the world right now."
"Kind of early. She still not feeling well?"
Emily smiled to herself. "She's on the mend. We had a really nice time today. It's gonna be a nice week, I think."
"Good. I figured you two could use some mother-daughter time. I know the whole…daddy's girl thing gets to you even though you say it doesn't." The background noise grew softer; Emily figured Hotch was moving away from Sean and the boys to a quieter place.
"That's not what I heard," Emily said.
"What do you mean?"
"I heard the trip was a vacation from me. 'Let's Get the Men Away from Menopause?'"
Hotch laughed from deep inside his belly. "That was Sean. I hold no responsibility for his actions. Not that I ever have…"
"It's okay," Emily said with a soft laugh. "I know I've been on my broomstick lately. I'm sorry I've been so bitchy…and I…" Emily shut her bedroom door on her way in. "I didn't mean what I said about giving head. Not at all."
Hotch chuckled. "Yeah, I know."
"Well, if you're gonna get cocky, no pun intended, then I can take that back."
"You know I'm joking. Listen, I've gotta go." Hotch sounded rather abrupt.
"What's going on?"
"I said it. I've gotta go…to the bathroom."
"Ahh…let me guess, it's time to pee on a tree?"
"Only for the fourth time. Don't be so judgmental."
A/N: This oneshot has been in my head for a long time and I'm glad I finally felt like writing it! My muse can be so stubborn sometimes.
Please leave a review! No account required. Let me know if you'd be interested in a story about the camping trip ;)